Haiti – a different kind of attempted overthrow

Jul 10, 2021 Editorial

Kaieteur News – The last thing that struggling Haiti needed to occur was this bloody assassination of its unsteady and under siege President, Jovenel Moise. We say bloody because it was a barbarous job where reportedly 12 bullets mowed down Mr. Moise. It was also botched, because his wife has been critically injured in the attack. As regrettable and deplorable as is the death of Mr. Moise, and the manner in which it occurred, it was more than the taking of his life, and serious injury to his spouse that was undertaken and resulted. It was an attack on Haiti itself, with countless questions waiting to be answered, if they ever will be, and the first of which is who?
The dead president’s rule was not only ill-fated, but it was also unsteady, as he was about to install his seventh Prime Minister, when brutal death came, and from early appearances, from foreign hands. For a country long unstable, and wracked by unending internal discontent, foreign interlopers and interventions are the last things that this impoverished society can handle. Again, we at this paper must ask this simple question: who is behind this attempted destabilising and ultimately responsible? We speak not of the triggermen, the now much-bandied about, and much accepted official blanket of foreign “mercenaries.”
It is a term of art, and says much, while still concealing much more. Soldiers of fortune are ever-present and always available. But for such adventurous guns-for-hire, foreigners to be sufficiently motivated (incentivised) to storm a country’s presidential residence and riddle its leader with bullets, and seemingly casual disdain for the welfare of nearby family, takes a lot to swallow. That is, all by themselves. There are many missing pieces, and all mysterious. It reminds of that failed assault from not too long ago in Venezuela, against an also unpopular and unsteady leader, and which has all but disappeared off the radar of coverage or interest.
It is understood that among those encircled and arrested are some of the fallen president’s own countrymen. Would this turn out to be, when all stones are uncovered (if ever), another botched secretly sponsored official operation? Russia, China, and Iran, the usual scapegoats, are seemingly unblemished in this deadly affair. Aside from the homegrown participators themselves, this leaves only a couple of interested parties from the north and more distant Europe, in the grand scheme of things and the book of considerations. It does not make for inspiring reading just like it did in that amateur attempt in Venezuela. Still, because this is the 21st century with all of its noble ideals, especially from the Big Powers, one would have thought that such messy affairs are best left for the locals to lead the way and do their own heavy lifting. Current narratives are of the English and Spanish speaking among the invaders, which sounds like either Columbians or Dominicans massaged to be the fall guys. Who are the real brains behind the triggermen in this bloody Haitian caper? Who should have known of such a plot involving such a relatively sizable group of “mercenaries”?
As we present all this, we remind our reading audience that Haitians had dared the unimaginable, which led to the unforgivable. Some fiery patriots with illustrious names, Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, and Henri Christophe, have gone down in history as the leaders of the only successful revolution against oppressions of European masters. The harsh price that that country has had to pay, in one form or another and under the heel of the foreign boot, in the centuries since stand as a testimony to the example made of Haiti. It is simple, final: don’t ever dare to think this, and worse, don’t ever again.
It is why Haitian society has been kicked around, played games with, by despotic leaders, and always with some foreign orchestration in the murk and muddle. This invisible, but potent foreign hand and probable intellectual underpinnings, repeat the age-old story, with the same results. A society weakened, and its citizens the doormat of all comers and wherever they go. We make no conclusions, as yet. But we watch and weigh, as we wish that Haiti will emerge from this in one piece.

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